This page is a compendium of items of interest - news stories, scurrilous rumors, links, academic papers, damnable prevarications, rants and amusing anecdotes - about LAUSD and/or public education that didn't - or haven't yet - made it into the "real" 4LAKids blog and weekly e-newsletter at http://www.4LAKids.blogspot.com . 4LAKidsNews will be updated at arbitrary random intervals.
by Natalie Gross | Education Writers Association/Latino Ed Beat
| http://bit.ly/1OeSCe0
December 22, 2015 ::Can
a longer school day help students who are learning English grasp the language
faster and better? A new report from the National Center on Time and Learning
suggests it’s a strategy worth considering.
The report from the Boston-based organization dedicated to
increasing the time and quality of instruction in high-poverty schools
highlights three elementary campuses in Massachusetts and Denver that have seen
the expanded learning time model make a difference for their English-language
learners (ELLs).
While all three schools are majority Latino, Godsman
Elementary School in Denver had the most English-language learners at 86
percent of its student body. Nearly two-thirds of the students are native
Spanish speakers of Mexican heritage. The school has reaped success from adding
two and a half hours to its school day and implementing a dual-language model
in which students get three hours of literacy-focused instruction every day.
Guilmette Elementary School in Lawrence, Massachusetts
lengthened its school day by 90 minutes in 2013 and devotes an hour a day to
targeting students’ individual achievement gaps. During that time, ELL students
use Imagine Learning, a computer-based educational program that emphasizes oral
language skills and vocabulary through videos, pictures and direct translation.
Since also creating a position for an ELL coach at the school, the school’s
performance on the annual state test for ELLs has skyrocketed, and Guilmette is
now ranked among the top 15 percent in the state, according to the report.
The third campus evaluated for the study, Hill Elementary in
Revere, Massachusetts, added 300 hours to its calendar, which translated to an
additional week of the school year as well as a longer school day. The
additional time has allowed for more collaboration among teachers — ELL
specialists included — and up to three one-on-one sessions between ELL students
and their specialized instructors.
As Corey Mitchell of Education Week points out, there were a
few notable strategies that worked across the board for the students learning
English in these schools.
·Extended literacy blocks, with upwards of 2.5
hours per day focused on skills needed for reading and writing.
·Using data to pinpoint areas where individual
students struggle, then subdividing those students into small groups where
staff can help address the challenges.
·Maintaining support and services for
fluent-speaking English-learners who need to boost their academic English
skills.
·Ensuring that teachers meet often to align
lesson plans, and identify and address student needs.
“The benefits of having more instructional time during the
day and across the year to build in many layers of learning and mastering
English are undeniable,” the center’s co-founder and president Jennifer Davis
said in a statement. “With substantially more time than the conventional
schedule, the schools we document are able to provide the kind of deep support
that traditional schools find much more difficult to do.”
D - Sacramento :: WE’VE known since 1964 that cigarette smoking is harmful to your
health. We’ve known for more than 40 years that alcohol damages the
developing brain of a child. We’ve known since the mid-70s that asbestos
causes cancer and other serious diseases. Knowing what we know now, we
do not smoke in enclosed public spaces like airplanes; we have passed
laws to keep children from smoking or drinking alcohol; and we do not
use asbestos as an industrial product.
As
we become more intellectually sophisticated and advanced, with greater
and broader access to information and knowledge, we have given up old
practices in the name of safety and progress. That is, except when it
comes to sports.
Over
the past two decades it has become clear that repetitive blows to the
head in high-impact contact sports like football, ice hockey, mixed martial arts
and boxing place athletes at risk of permanent brain damage. There is
even a Hollywood movie, “Concussion,” due out this Christmas Day, that
dramatizes the story of my discoveries in this area of research. Why,
then, do we continue to intentionally expose our children to this risk?
If
a child who plays football is subjected to advanced radiological and
neurocognitive studies during the season and several months after the
season, there can be evidence of brain damage at the cellular level of
brain functioning, even if there were no documented concussions or
reported symptoms. If that child continues to play over many seasons,
these cellular injuries accumulate to cause irreversible brain damage,
which we know now by the name Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or
C.T.E., a disease that I first diagnosed in 2002.
Depending
on the severity of the condition, the child now has a risk of
manifesting symptoms of C.T.E. like major depression, memory loss,
suicidal thought and actions, loss of intelligence as well as dementia
later in life. C.T.E. has also been linked to drug and alcohol abuse as
the child enters his 20s, 30s and 40s.
The
risk of permanent impairment is heightened by the fact that the brain,
unlike most other organs, does not have the capacity to cure itself
following all types of injuries. In more than 30 years of looking at
normal brain cells in the microscope, I have yet to see a neuron that
naturally creates a new neuron to regenerate itself.
We
are born with a certain number of neurons. We can only lose them; we
cannot create new neurons to replenish old or dying ones.
In
2011, the two leading and governing professional pediatrics
associations in the United States and Canada, the American Academy of
Pediatrics and the Canadian Pediatric Society, published a position
paper recommending that children should no longer be allowed to engage
in high-impact contact sports, exemplified by boxing, and willfully
damage their developing brains.
Since
then, researchers have independently confirmed that the play of amateur
or professional high-impact contact sports is the greatest risk factor
for the development of C.T.E. Where does society at large stand now,
knowing what we know?
As
physicians, it is our role to educate and inform an adult about the
dangers of, for example, smoking. If that adult decides to smoke, he is
free to do so, and I will be the first to defend that freedom. In the
same way, if an adult chooses to play football, ice hockey, mixed
martial arts or boxing, it is within his rights.
However,
as a society, the question we have to answer is, when we knowingly and
willfully allow a child to play high-impact contact sports, are we
endangering that child?
Our
children are minors who have not reached the age of consent. It is our
moral duty as a society to protect the most vulnerable of us. The human
brain becomes fully developed at about 18 to 25 years old. We should at
least wait for our children to grow up, be provided with the information
and education on the risk of play, and let them make their own
decisions. No adult, not a parent or a coach, should be allowed to make
this potentially life-altering decision for a child.
We
have a legal age for drinking alcohol; for joining the military; for
voting; for smoking; for driving; and for consenting to have sex. We
must have the same when it comes to protecting the organ that defines
who we are as human beings.
DEc 23, 2015 :: The
crowd of about 200 huddled in the parking lot of San Pedro City Ballet,
ensconced in fog and drizzle. Restless and excited, they might have
been awaiting the arrival of a rock legend. Some rubbed their palms
together to keep warm on the chilly Monday afternoon; others stretched
their necks, peering down Pacific Avenue in anticipation. Neighbors
crouched on the roof of a small bungalow next door to get a glimpse of
the action.
When at last a gray SUV rolled up, smartphones and tablets shot into the air and the chanting began: "Misty, Misty, Misty."
San Pedro's ballet prodigy was home.
A
populist ballerina if ever there was one, Misty Copeland has become a
pioneering hero not just to dance hopefuls but to a generation of young
women looking for inspiring, boundary-breaking athletic and artistic
role models. Earlier this year, the American Ballet Theatre soloist was promoted to principal dancer; she is the New York company's first African American woman to hold that title. And she was the first African American woman to dance the lead in an ABT "Swan Lake" production. It's partly why Copeland landed on the cover of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People" issue this spring.
She
has also punctured the pop culture zeitgeist, making the art form more
accessible to young people. She's performed with Prince and is a social
media star with more than 82,000 Twitter followers and 800,000 on
Instagram, not to mention the subject of the documentary "A Ballerina's Tale." .
Just last week, Copeland appeared on "Barbara Walters Presents: The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2015" and "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
"Is
it correct to say you saved ballet?" Kimmel asked Copeland, who was
making her second appearance in two months on the show (during her
October appearance, she gamely gave a ballet lesson to Kimmel and his
sidekick Guillermo Rodriguez, who both wore pink tutus for the
occasion).
"I would not say that!" Copeland said, laughing.
Copeland
does her part to support the San Pedro City Ballet, where she was
discovered at 13 through the school's outreach program for under-served
youths.
"America loves their ballerina. San Pedro loves its
ballerina," Councilman Joe Buscaino told the crowd gathered for a mural
dedication and street-naming ceremony in Copeland's honor. The corner of
West 13th Street and South Pacific Avenue will now be known as Misty
Copeland Square.
American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Misty Copeland. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Buscaino
spoke about Copeland's difficult personal and professional trajectory,
which included growing up poor, starting ballet studies later than most,
facing racial bias and a fraught custody battle between her mother and
SPCB co-directors Cindy and Patrick Bradley.
"Misty Copeland is
being celebrated because we recognize the degree of difficulty life has
dealt her," Buscaino said. "She is the perfect example of why America is
great."
In an earlier interview, Cindy Bradley said she saw
Copeland's potential for dance stardom in their very first class
together. "I always say it's something I can't explain," Bradley said.
"When I touched her foot, I had a vision for her. I could tell she was a
natural. In the months and years to come, it took hard work and
perseverance on her part, but I saw her potential in those first few
moments."
Copeland and her five siblings were living in a welfare
motel room with her single mother, subsisting on food stamps, when she
first turned up at a free class Bradley was teaching at the San Pedro
Boys & Girls Club. Later that year, she moved in with the Bradleys
and their 2-year-old son, Wolf, so she could concentrate on ballet. When
Copeland was 15 and trying to balance the demands of ballet and her
single mother's desire for a relationship, Copeland filed emancipation
papers and her mother filed a restraining order against the Bradleys.
After much back and forth, the restraining order was dropped and
Copeland ended her emancipation case. The young ballerina returned to
live with her mother full time.
Although she and the Bradleys
didn't speak for several years after that, they reunited when Copeland
was writing her memoir, last year's "Life in Motion: An Unlikely
Ballerina" (optioned by New Line Cinema), and they've stayed close,
Cindy Bradley says.
During Monday's dedication, Wolf, now 22, sang
"Wait for Me," which he'd written for Copeland, as more than 80 SPCB
students, carrying white roses, performed for the crowd. As they swirled
and swayed, waving their arms in the air, Copeland stood by the podium
and beamed, her hair blowing in the rain and, fighting back tears,
seemingly overwhelmed with emotion.
"This is insane," she'd told
the crowd. "Growing up, San Pedro was the only place I considered home;
it was the only place where I felt a real connection with the
community." Later, she added: "No matter what platform I'm speaking on, I
always give credit to this incredible, small, warm community that made
me the person that I am today."
Many
in the crowd then made their way to the nearby Warner Grand Theatre,
where Copeland taught a master class for 50 students before an audience
of about 800. Proceeds from the event support SPCB's DancEd Steps Up
dance outreach program to public schools.
Piano music and the
shloof-shloofing sound of sliding ballet slippers filled the auditorium.
"Back, close, inside leg, close," Copeland instructed. "Now relax, just
let it go."
The admiration from these young women, as they
straightened their backs and stretched their arms, twirling on their
toes, was nearly palpable. But Copeland's biggest fan might have been
out in the lobby.
"I like how nice she is and how she
became a principal," Alavarez said, smiling brightly. "And it was so
awesome how they named Pacific after her. It's, like: Now she's
history!"
_____________
Misty Danielle Copeland attended Point Fermin Elementary School, Dana Middle School and San Pedro High School. As mentioned above, she began ballet in a program at the San Pedro Boys & Girls Club. Former LAUSD Board Member Mike Lansing was and continues to the the Executive Director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Los Angeles Harbor - the largest private child development agency and premiere after school facility in the entire south bay community.
As last Tuesday ended, the threat that closed the nation's second largest school district was declared to be not credible.
Now that there's been more than a week to make sense of the day's events, we asked school board members — the people who
direct L.A. Unified — to weigh in on what went down and how it might
affect the school district moving forward. Six of seven got back to
us. They all stand by their initial decision to shut down the district.
Mónica Garcia, Board District 2, which includes central L.A. and Koreatown
How do you feel the closure went, a week later?
"We
haven't actually gotten the review of everything as a board.
Preliminarily, I can say that we learned a lot. The easiest thing is, we
need correct phone numbers [of families], so we have to do better. ...
That is by far the one thing that made a big difference." Anything else that could have been handled better on a chaotic day?
"There's
a lot that can get better. I'm just not going to start talking about
that until we look at it in a very organized way. We need to do it in a
very intentional way. All the feelings on whether people agreed or
disagreed, that's not going to be helpful. What is helpful is to know
what we knew, when we knew it, what happened, and what's going to be
different. That will be a public conversation, but it's been a week.
People understood the severity of it, people understood that this was a
Southern California response, but people understood also that there was
an immense impact. Undisputed." What do you mean by Southern California response?
"I'm
saying, you have to understand what happened through the lens of
Southern California. We have to understand it in the context of our
region, because we are so big, we are just such a massive combined
entity."
Scott Schmerelson, Board District 3, which includes the West San Fernando Valley
Did the district make the right decision?
"I
think that shutting down was the right thing. I got that message, that
schools were closed, at about 6:15 in the morning, and I was thinking,
'My gosh, I haven't heard anything on the radio or TV. Am I dreaming or
is this a real message?' I thought, 'Gosh, it would be on the news. I
guess they were waiting to make sure that it was absolutely the right
thing to do.' I do think it was." Why?
"The
kids are very important to us. Just one incidence of terrorism at a
school site or at a school office would be tragic. Just one. ... It's
too much of a risk to take." But that doesn't mean it was easy.
"It's
a hard thing to do; it's a hard step to take. My goodness, those poor
parents. ... They had to scramble for someone to pick their kids up. My
parents at my schools were single parents, and I didn't know who was
going to pick them up. I can put myself in their place, but it was the
right thing." What about the commentary from New York?
"I
thought, 'My goodness, you certainly have your nerve.' We shouldn't
judge what you do, and you shouldn't judge what we do. New Yorkers are a
little tougher than we are in Los Angeles — I'm from the East Coast too
— but we have to do what we think is right." Any regrets?
"Many
times, we don't have the correct phone numbers for our kids. Our kids
don't want to tell you because we're the ones calling their house and
telling you they're doing badly. That's a problem when we try to make
our robocalls. We learned now to keep a constant check on numbers that
change." Does the shutdown set a precedent for future, similar threats to grind LAUSD to a halt?
"We get threats every single day at different schools in different places. The way this one was
written was more than the usual nutty kind of threat that we get. This
just seemed to be too possibly credible. ... It was too scary for my
liking. We will still continue to weigh our threats and discuss them."
Steve
Zimmer, president and representative of Board District 4, which
includes the West Side and parts of the San Fernando Valley
Now that you've had a week to reflect, how do you feel about the shutdown?
"We
did what we had to do to make sure that we were absolutely certain that
children and their teachers and all of our employees were safe, which
is pretty much how I felt throughout the process." Were any mistakes made?
"There
were a lot of things that could have gone better. The most important
thing that we learned is that we need to look very carefully at our
communications systems, where they are working and where they are not
working as well as they should. That’s just one. I’m sure as we get the
real internal reporting of all of the different, how all the different
mechanisms worked, we’ll be able to look at a lot of different elements
of our response."
That said ...
"It’s
important to remember, the last time we shut down schools before last
Tuesday was the Northridge earthquake. That was 21 years ago. So given
that reality and given the intensity of the moment, I think certainly we
can find things that didn't work well and improve upon them, but all
things considered, it was a fairly remarkably effective operation." What about the teen who died that day?
"Of
course, that's a terrible tragedy. Our support teams were out there.
Parenthetically, there's been an uptick in lives lost through vehicular
accidents of young children in the past two or three years, and that's
something I'm very concerned about. It was awful that it coincided with
this day. It's just something that's been happening more and more." Would a similarly worded threat be treated the same way moving forward?
"Yeah.
We learn from every incident like this. I think that we learn certain
things about things that might be able to be identified earlier so that
we might have been able to earlier confirm that we were dealing with
something that was not an imminent threat, but that’s never going to be
perfect. I can’t sit here and tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that
we won’t have another closure before the end of the 15-16 school year.
If we’re ever in a situation again where we can’t confirm that we’re
secure, we’re again going to err on the side of caution." What have you heard from your constituents?
"I
don't often get positive feedback. That's just not what happens. It's
been interesting for me to get positive feedback. I think it's genuine."
Ref
Rodriguez, Board District 5, which includes neighborhoods north,
northeast and east of downtown as well as the cities of southeast L.A.
County
One week later, do you think LAUSD did the right thing?
"I
still believe that what we did with the information that we had was the
right thing to do. I support the decision that was made." What could be improved about the district's response to emergencies?
"Where
I think we could continue to improve is how we communicate that widely
and that quickly. What are the mechanisms that we use for communications
to families and to communities? How can we do that in a quicker
manner?" How could that happen?
"Our system
puts families into queues, so you could be in the same school, or you
could be neighbors, and you would have gotten your message a half-hour
before your neighbor. We need to make sure our systems are robust
enough." What have you heard from parents and teachers?
"We’ve
gotten universally positive responses. We put kids first and their
safety first. We haven’t gotten any teachers thinking it was bad. I
personally — and through our office's methods of communication — we’ve
not received anything where folks felt we went overboard or we wasted
people’s time or taxpayer dollars."
Mónica Ratliff, Board District 6, which includes the East San Fernando Valley
Ratliff declined to answer questions by phone because of travel plans; instead, so responded by email. How do you feel the closure went?
"I
think it went extremely well considering the immense size of the
district. I have asked my staff to learn more about the robocalls. I am
concerned that some parents did not get notified in a timely manner." When did you first find out about the threat?
"No comment." Do you still stand by the district's decision to shut down?
"Yes." What could be improved in the future?
"See first answer regarding the notification system." What kind of feedback have you heard from constituents, positive and negative?
"It's been consistently positive and supportive." Does shutting down for this kind of threat set a precedent for future threats?
"No comment." Would a similarly worded threat be handled the same way in the future?
"No comment."
Richard Vladovic, Board District 7, which includes portions of South LA and stretches down to the harbor area
All things considered, how do you think the closure went?
"I
think it went very well. There were a few small glitches, and we’ll
learn from that. Kids were safe and parents were notified — could have
been notified better and a little earlier — but we don’t time these
things. You just gotta do what you gotta do for safety." What were these small glitches you speak of?
"Consistency on messages parents were getting from the district." Given the information available at the moment of the threat, could the shutdown have been handled any better?
"Things
would have been different if school was already in session [when we got
the threat]. We didn’t have the luxury of New York [where that was the
case]. Like I say, we’ll be better, the city will be better, and
everyone will be better because of this. You never gamble with children.
... Nothing’s more important than their safety. If you’re going to make
mistakes, make them on behalf of children and their safety, and I think
we did that. Hindsight’s 20/20; safety’s not."
George McKenna, Board District 1, which includes South and southwest L.A.
McKenna could not be reached after several attempts to call or email him since Monday.
THE NY TIMES DECIDED CHRISTMAS DAY IS THE DAY TO WRITE ABOUT SEX ABUSE IN EAST COAST PREP SCHOOLS. I'm not recommending the story for today ...but don't ignore it.
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE NY Times | http://nyti.ms/1J8pAwp
Stew Milne St. George's School in Middletown, R.I. The school on
Wednesday released to alumni a report on its investigation of sexual
abuse by employees in the 1970s and '80s.
Dec 25, 2015 :: An investigation by the prestigious St. George’s School found that 26
students were abused by school employees in the 1970s and ’80s.
ALSO SEE: ‘Great Is the Truth’ Looks at Horace Mann Scandal - The New York Times Book Review | http://nyti.ms/22rUsyq
A packed Board of Education
meeting this month at Grover Middle School in West Windsor, N.J., where a
districtwide debate that often splits along racial lines is underway
about the pressure put on students there to succeed.Credit
Mark Makela for The New York Times
DEC. 25, 2015 :: This
fall, David Aderhold, the superintendent of a high-achieving school
district near Princeton, N.J., sent parents an alarming 16-page letter.
The
school district, he said, was facing a crisis. Its students were
overburdened and stressed out, juggling too much work and too many
demands.
In
the previous school year, 120 middle and high school students were
recommended for mental health assessments; 40 were hospitalized. And on a
survey administered by the district, students wrote things like, “I
hate going to school,” and “Coming out of 12 years in this district, I
have learned one thing: that a grade, a percentage or even a point is to
be valued over anything else.”
With
his letter, Dr. Aderhold inserted West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional
School District into a national discussion about the intense focus on
achievement at elite schools, and whether it has gone too far.
At
follow-up meetings, he urged parents to join him in advocating a
holistic, “whole child” approach to schooling that respects
“social-emotional development” and “deep and meaningful learning” over
academics alone. The alternative, he suggested, was to face the prospect
of becoming another Palo Alto, Calif., where outsize stress on teenage
students is believed to have contributed to two clusters of suicides in the last six years.
Photo
A button produced in support
of the "Take Back Childhood" movement started by Catherine Foley, a
local parent who has come to see the district’s high-pressure atmosphere
as antithetical to learning.Credit
Mark Makela for The New York Times
But instead of bringing families together, Dr. Aderhold’s letter
revealed a fissure in the district, which has 9,700 students, and one
that broke down roughly along racial lines. On one side are white
parents like Catherine Foley, a former president of the Parent Teacher
Student Association at her daughter’s middle school, who has come to see
the district’s increasingly pressured atmosphere as antithetical to
learning.
On
the other side are parents like Mike Jia, one of the thousands of
Asian-American professionals who have moved to the district in the past
decade, who said Dr. Aderhold’s reforms would amount to a “dumbing down”
of his children’s education.
”What
is happening here reflects a national anti-intellectual trend that will
not prepare our children for the future,” Mr. Jia said.
Photo
Outside Grover Middle School, part of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional School District.Credit
Mark Makela for The New York Times
About
10 minutes from Princeton and an hour and a half from New York City,
West Windsor and Plainsboro have become popular bedroom communities for
technology entrepreneurs, pharmaceutical researchers and engineers,
drawn in large part by the public schools. From the last three
graduating classes, 16 seniors were admitted to M.I.T. It churns out
Science Olympiad winners, classically trained musicians and students
with perfect SAT scores.
The
district has become increasingly popular with immigrant families from
China, India and Korea. This year, 65 percent of its students are
Asian-American, compared with 44 percent in 2007. Many of them are the
first in their families born in the United States.
They
have had a growing influence on the district. Asian-American parents
are enthusiastic
supporters of the competitive instrumental music
program. They have been huge supporters of the district’s advanced
mathematics program, which once began in the fourth grade but will now
start in the sixth. The change to the program, in which 90 percent of
the participating students are Asian-American, is one of Dr. Aderhold’s
reforms.
Asian-American
students have been avid participants in a state program that permits
them to take summer classes off campus for high school credit, allowing
them to maximize the number of honors and Advanced Placement classes they can take, another practice that Dr. Aderhold is limiting this school year.
With
many Asian-American children attending supplemental instructional
programs, there is a perception among some white families that the
elementary school curriculum is being sped up to accommodate them.
Both
Asian-American and white families say the tension between the two
groups has grown steadily over the past few years, as the number of
Asian families has risen. But the division has become more obvious in
recent months as Dr. Aderhold has made changes, including no-homework
nights, an end to high school midterms and finals, and a “right to
squeak” initiative that made it easier to participate in the music
program.
At
a packed meeting of the school district’s Board of Education held
shortly before the winter break, a middle school cafeteria was filled
with parents, with Asian-Americans sitting on one side and white
families on the other. Some parents and students described rampant
cheating, grade fixation and days so stressful that some students could
not wait for them to end. But other parents, primarily Asian-American
ones, described a different picture, one in which their values were
being ignored.
Helen
Yin, the mother of an eighth grader and a kindergartner, told the crowd
that Dr. Aderhold was attempting to hold her and her children back. At
one point, a visibly upset Ms. Yin, who moved from Chengdu, China, to
pursue a master’s degree in chemistry, shouted to the room filled with
parents, “Who can I trust?”
Photo
David Aderhold, the
superintendent of the West Windsor-Plainsboro Board of Education,
center, and its president, Anthony Fleres, right, listened to parents
during the recent board meeting.Credit
Mark Makela for The New York Times
“I
don’t think limitations can help,” she said later, in an interview. “If
children are to learn and grow, they need experiences.”
Jennifer Lee, professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, and an author of “The Asian American Achievement Paradox,”
says misunderstandings between first-generation Asian-American parents
and those who have been in this country longer are common. What white
middle-class parents do not always understand, she said, is how much
pressure recent immigrants feel to boost their children into the middle
class.
“They
don’t have the same chances to get their children internships or jobs
at law firms,” Professor Lee said. “So what they believe is that their
children must excel beyond their white peers in academic settings so
they have the same chances to excel later.”
The
issue of the stresses felt by students in elite school districts has
gained attention in recent years as schools in places like Newton,
Mass., and Palo Alto have reported clusters of suicides. West
Windsor-Plainsboro has not had a teenage suicide in recent years, but
Dr. Aderhold, who has worked in the district for seven years and been
superintendent for the last two and a half, said he had seen troubling
signs.
Photo
Helen Yin, the mother of an
eighth grader and a kindergartner in the district, told a crowd at the
board meeting that reforms by Dr. Aderhold were holding her children
back.Credit
Mark Makela for The New York Times
In
a recent art assignment, a middle school student depicted an
overburdened child who was being berated for earning an A, rather than
an A+, on a calculus exam. In the image, the mother scolds the student
with the words, “Shame on you!”
Further,
he said, the New Jersey Education Department has flagged at least two
pieces of writing on state English language assessments in which
students expressed suicidal thoughts.
The
survey commissioned by the district found that 68 percent of high
school honor and Advanced Placement students reported feeling stressed
about school “always or most of the time.”
“We need to bring back some balance,” Dr. Aderhold said. “You don’t want to wait until it’s too late to do something.”
Not all public opinion has fallen along racial lines.
Karen
Sue, the Chinese-American mother of a fifth grader and an eighth
grader, believes the competition within the district has gotten out of
control. Ms. Sue, who was born in the United States to immigrant
parents, wants her peers to dial it back.
“It’s
become an arms race, an educational arms race,” she said. “We all want
our kids to achieve and be successful. The question is, at what cost?”
